Empiricism in the Spanish Atlantic World

Abstract

The Atlantic World fostered the creation and development of institutions and institutionalized empirical practices for the study and organization of the New World. This empiricism was articulated in reports based on personal experience, testing practices, and collaborative practices that put together partial reports into general views of natural things. The story of Spanish activities in the Atlantic World helps to explain the emergence of empirical practices in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. This chapter first discusses the practices employed for searching after commodities in the New World. It then talks about the establishment of a veritable chamber of knowledge within the House of Trade for collecting information about the New World, and how the House fostered debates about the relationship between theory and practice. The humanist Juan Pérez de Oliva reports that Columbus, in his second voyage (1493), took “artisans necessary for the building and maintenance of cities.

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